Property agents to benefit from technology

Sooner or later, agents might have access to government information to check the owner of a specific flat, a property’s floor area or the immigration status of probable residents.

The government has exposed that there have been some moves in influencing technology to advance the method for property transactions, nevertheless further progress is needed in this section, informed the Straits Times in their report.

Mr. Desmond Lee, the Second Minister for National Development noted this all through the PropNex’s Quarterly Convention on August 15 (Tuesday), at the same time giving an update on the ministry’s Real Estate Industry Transformation Map revealed in the month of March.

With innovative technology, Mr. Lee said that the real estate agents can immediately go through government data to review the owner’s information of a specific flat, the immigration status of prospect residents or a property’s floor area. Nevertheless, this modernization is still being studied.

“Nowadays, there are still loads of manual procedures in a property deal, which can be laborious… If these are shortened, property agents can aim attention to more of their time on greater-value work such as the human touch, personal touch, giving quality advice and offering additional services to their customers,” Mr. Lee added.

His idea was praised by Jasmine Lau, the Associate District Director of OrangeTee, who thought that it would lead to fewer paperwork charge on the side of agents, letting them to concentrate on other things such as marketing and strategy as well as customer service.

Even though she called on the government to guarantee that the approaching modernizations would not make property agents terminated, Lee clarified that the property sector should face “the recent realities” of slower economic growth and manpower.

Additional technological impulse is for property agencies to make accessible of the data of their agents online, counting track record, thus clients can review and rate them, said Lee, saying that OrangeTee presented a specific platform in February 2016.

“This is a feature which (the Council for Estate Agencies) will carry on giving support and study how to bring about broader adoption and acceptance within our industry.”

He added that the platform of OrangeTee had raised commissions as well as the sales deal numbers, according to a study from the National University of Singapore’s School of Design and Environment.

“The capacity to innovate and respond is significant to keep in touch of technological progress… OrangeTee’s Property Agents Review is an important step in this course,” said the professor in the Department of Real Estate and a study’s lead researcher, Ong Seow Eng.